Micro 4/3 (MFT) : Read as “micro four thirds”, or what I like to call “camera that has a lot less mechanical parts”.

Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Camera (MILC) : Or just “mirrorless”. I shall put this as “big smart phone camera, but without call functions and Internet”.

Hot Shoe : An “extension port” for you to plug in a flash.

Viewfinder : This is where you see how your photo will look like before taking a shot.

Electronic viewfinder (EVF) : The digital version of the viewfinder. Just think of it like your camera app.

Sensor : Today, we have replaced film with electronic sensors. In “camera terms”, “sensor” simply refers to the “electronic light sensor”, which converts light to electronic data (then is stored into your memory card as pictures).

Full Frame Sensor : The industry has a certain guideline to the sizes of the electronic sensors. Technically, the bigger the better, but it also gets more expensive. “Full frame” is one of the best you can get in the market, but is also very expensive.

Crop Sensor : The smaller brother electronic sensor, very common in the market these days.

Shutter : Just a piece of plastic or metal covering the sensor, to protect it from dust and butter fingers. Flips open when you take a picture, resulting in that “click” sound. Some cameras don’t even have a shutter these days.

SECTION B
ZOOM

Aperture : Opening in the lens that allows light to pass through. The amount of light is usually controlled by a set of aperture blades.

Depth of Field : How far your lens is in focus into the scene. A deep depth of field would mean almost everything from front to back is in focus. A shallow depth of field could mean the foreground is in focus and background is blurred, or vice versa.

F-Stop or F-Number : Confusing mathematics to measure how much light goes into the camera. Bigger f-stop number = Less light into camera, more depth of field. Smaller f-stop number = More light into camera, less depth of field.

Lens Flare : When you shoot with the sun (or a strong light source) in your face, and the lens start to show some funky light reflections.

Vignette : Ever wonder why lens are round, but the pictures are rectangle? If you look at some pictures closely, the center is brighter than the corners. That is called a “vignette”.

Chromatic Aberration : This happens more in the cheaper and older lens – you will see a funky reddish purplish “outline” on your subjects.

Ghosting : Simply put, a “double image”.

SECTION C
ZOOM

Digital zoom: Digitally enlarging a part of the image, often resulting in a loss of image quality.

Optical Zoom : The “superior zoom”, where the quality of the image is dependent on the lens you have.

SECTION D
SHOOTING

Megapixels (MP) : How much electronic data the camera can capture. Note – more megapixels does not mean a better camera. It simply means more data is captured, but not more quality. The quality of the photo still dependent on the sensor.

ISO : How sensitive the sensor is to light. The higher the ISO number, the more light sensitive the sensor is, but produces more electronic noise… Just keep the ISO low in daylight and a little higher in low light.

Shutter Speed : How long the shutter is left open to expose the sensor to light.

Shutter count : How many times the shutter has “flipped open and close”. Yep, the shutter is mechanical and will fail after a certain number of shutter count.

White Balance : Pictures can be color contaminated by light – warm (orange) or cold (blue). White balance is the attempt to correct this… or the creative use to create different looks.

Exposure : When you take a picture. I.E. You expose the sensor to light.

Long Exposure : When you have a slow shutter speed. I.E. You expose the sensor to light for a long time.

Under-exposed : When the sensor / film gets insufficient light, and the picture turns out too dark.

Over-exposed : When the sensor / film gets too much light, and the picture turns out too bright.

Program mode (P) : Semi-full auto mode. Let the camera decide the exposure settings, but you can still shift it around.

Single Salvo : A single shot.

Burst : Continuous shots.

Bracketing : Take consecutive shots that have different exposure settings. E.G. first shot is normal exposure, second is under-exposed and third is over-exposed.

SECTION F
FOCUS

Manual Focus (MF) : You turn the focus ring, you decide with your own eyes if things are sharp.

Auto Focus (AF) : You press a button, let the camera decide if things are sharp.

Auto Focus Points (AF Points) : Those squares you can select on your view finder, to specify where you want to be sharp and in focus.

Single Servo Focus : Auto-focus that goes “beep” once in focus and stops.

Continuous Focus : Auto-focus that will continuously track and try to keep things in focus.

Single Point Focus : You specify which exact point you want to be sharp, auto-focus does the rest.

Dynamic Area Focus : You specify which point you want to be sharp (but take the adjacent points into consideration as well), auto-focus does the rest.

Auto-Area Focus : Let auto-focus decide which points need to be sharp in the scene.

Group-Area Focus : For the newer cameras only. What happens when you have 2 subjects? Group area focus.

SECTION G
MEDIA

Film : Once upon a time, we do not have memory cards. We buy and load film rolls into the camera instead… which are just expensive pieces of light sensitive chemical paper. Yes, they need to be processed (developed) in a dark room before they actually become “photos”.

Polaroid : “Instant film”, shoot and it develops on the spot.

Memory Card : Where all the digital photos are recorded into. There are a whole lot of different formats these days – SD Card, Micro SD Card, CF Card, etc… do check before buying. See this for a long list of memory cards on Wikipedia.

Memory Stick : Sony’s memory card. By Sony, for Sony. Doh.

CF Card : Compact flash, used in the more “robust” cameras for their reliability and speed.

Micro SD Card : The smaller brother of SD Card, commonly used in smartphones and tablets these days.

SD Card : Secure digital card, one of the most commonly used memory cards today.

XQD Card : One of the newer card formats. Shows promising results of more storage space and faster read/write speed.

SECTION H
FILE FORMATS

RAW : Uncompressed file image, retains the most data and best for editing. Large file size.